Doctrine of Continuous Act

- Concurrence requires mens rea and actus reus to coincide in point at the same time. This is
known as temporal coincidence. It also seems to require that the mens rea matches or
corresponds with the actus reus. This is known as the correspondence principle.
- The actus reus and the mens rea of a crime MUST coincide.

Edwards v Ddin (1976) 63 Cr App R 218 Divisional Court of QBD

The defendant went to a petrol station and filled up with petrol. He then asked the attendant
to put oil and water in the car. Whilst the attendant washed his hands the defendant drove off
without paying.
Held: His actions did not amount to theft as in contract law the property in the petrol passed to
the defendant when it was put into his petrol tank. At the time of forming the intention not to
pay for the petrol, it already belonged to him.

- Not all acts forming the basis of an actus reus are single, unconnected events. If a sequence
of events is inevitably linked, it may be viewed as a single transaction. So long as the
requisite mens rea is formed before the sequence begins, or during the sequence (before it
ends), the accused will be liable.
Fagan v Metropolitan Police Commissioner
o D assaulted PC Morris by parking his car on his foot. Initially he drove onto the
officers foot accidentally. When first asked to remove the car he refused but
eventually complied.
o Held: Failure to act could not constitute an assault, but the actus reus was a
continuing act and coincided at some point with the requisite mens rea.
o An assault is any act which intentionally or possibly recklessly causes another
person to apprehend immediate and unlawful personal violence.
o James J:
"A mere omission to act cannot amount to an assault."
"For an assault to be committed both the elements of actus reds and mens
rea must be present at the same time.'
'It is not necessary that mens rea should be present at the inception of the
actus reus; it can be superimposed upon an existing act."
"On the other hand, the subsequent inception of mens rea cannot convert
an act which has been complete without mens rea into an assault."
o Where an assault involved a battery, it matters not whether the battery is inflicted
directly by the body of the offender or through the medium of some weapon or
instrument controlled by the action of the offender. To constitute this offence,
some intentional act must have been performed; a mere omission to act cannot
amount to an assault.
o If the act, as distinct from the results thereof, is a continuing act, there is a
continuing threat to inflict unlawful force. If the assault involves a battery and that
battery continues, there is a continuing act of assault.
- However, the courts often apply a flexible approach in holding that the actus reus is a
continuing act. See:
R v Church
o The victim mocked the appellant's ability to satisfy her sexually and slapped his
face. A fight developed during which the appellant knocked her unconscious. He
tried to wake her for 30 mins to no avail. He believed she was dead and threw her
body into a river. Medical evidence revealed that the cause of death was drowning
and she therefore had been alive when he threw her into the river.
o Held: D's conduct amounted to a series of acts, which culminated in her death and
thus constituted manslaughter.
o Edmund Davies: 'an unlawful act causing the death of another cannot, simply
because it is an unlawful act, render a manslaughter verdict inevitable. For such a
verdict inexorably to follow, the unlawful act must be such as all sober and
reasonable people would inevitably recognise must subject the other person to, at
least, the risk of some harm resulting therefrom, albeit not serious harm.'
A grosser case of criminal negligence it would be difficult to imagine.

R v Thabo Meli
o Two men, acting in pursuance of a pre-arranged plan, plied their victim with a drink,
and then beat him over the head with intent to kill him. Believing him to be dead,
they rolled him over a cliff so as to make it appear that he had stumbled to his
death. In fact, the victim was not dead when they rolled him over the cliff. He died
later of exposure
o They appealed against their convictions on the grounds that the actus reus and
mens rea of the crime did not coincide. That is to say when they formed the
intention to kill, there was no actus reus as the man was still alive. When they threw
him off the cliff, there was no mens rea as they can intend to kill someone they
believed was already dead.
o Held: The actus reus and mens rea were present throughout the act; there is no need
to separate them, there was a causal link. Where the actus reus consists of a series
of linked acts, it is enough that the mens rea existed at some time during that series,
even if not necessarily at the time of the particular act which caused the death.
o Lord Reid: "[It is] ... impossible to divide up what was really one series of acts in this
way. There is no doubt that the accused set out to do all these acts in order to
achieve their plan, and as parts of their plan; and it is much too refined a ground of
judgment to say that, because they were under a misapprehension at one stage and
thought that their guilty purpose had been achieved before, in fact, it was achieved,
therefore they are to escape the penalties of the law."
 R v Le Brun
o The D struck his wife in the course of an argument outside the front door. In moving
his wife, she slipped from his grasp, hit her head on the pavement causing a
fractured skull, from which she died. The D was convicted of manslaughter.
o The court said that the unlawful act and the act causing death were all part of the
same transaction. The court stated that it did not matter that there was no
preconceived plan... the transaction continued as long as the D was trying to cover
up the crime he believed he had committed
o Lane LCJ stated: It could be possible to express the problem as one of causation. The
original unlawful blow to the chin was the but for cause of the latter actus reus. It
was the opening event in a series which was to culminate in death: the first link in
the chain of causation to use another metaphor. It cannot be said that the actions of
the appellant in dragging the victim away with the intention of avoiding liability
broke the chain which linked the initial blow with her death. In short, in
circumstances such as the present, which is the only concern of this court, the act
which causes death, and the necessary mental state to constitute manslaughter,
need not coincide in point of time

AG's Ref (No. 4 of 1980)

o D, in the course of a struggle pushed his girlfriend head first over the landing rail so
that she landed on her head on the floor below. Believing her to be dead he then
dragged her upstairs by a rope around her neck. Finally he cut her throat with a
knife before cutting up the body in a bath and then disposing of it.
o Held: It was impossible to establish whether V died in the original fall or whether he
killed her by his subsequent actions.
o A manslaughter conviction was possible, despite uncertainty as to the actual cause
of death, but only if it could be proved that each of D's acts was performed with the
requisite mens rea for that offence.
o Since the initial fall may well have killed V, it would not suffice to establish mens rea
(such as gross negligence) only in the subsequent act of disposal: the prosecution
also had to disprove D's claim that he had merely pushed her away in a 'reflex
action' when she dug her nails into him in the struggle on the upstairs landing.